


cards

by gladdecease



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Community: comment_fic, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-26 01:44:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gladdecease/pseuds/gladdecease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>General Grumman gives Roy several presents with double meanings over the course of his military career.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cards

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/110421.html?thread=24373845#t24373845) in response to [seta_suzume](http://seta_suzume.livejournal.com)'s prompt: Fullmetal Alchemist, Roy, solitaire

General Grumman gives Roy several presents with double meanings over the course of his military career. A chess set with hollow pieces to send notes in. A tailored suit he'll never wear so long as he has dress blues with political advice sewn into the lining. A bouquet of flowers to complement Riza's eyes as a message to go see her. The first of these, though, was a deck of cards.

He was still young, incredibly green, had barely gotten past his initial training. Master Hawkeye had been furious, but his father-in-law had never quite seen eye to eye with him, so it wasn't as if Roy was completely without a friend in the world. He had gone to see the General, then only wearing a single star on his shoulders, to ask for a reference, and had been presented with a sly smile and the deck of cards. Grumman told him that if he could figure out the secret they held he'd get more than a reference.

Roy spent the next three days examining the cards one by one, finding nothing special about their composition or design. He nearly gave up on the third night, tossing the cards aside in frustration. His roommate, spotting the cards, asked if he wanted a game. When Roy refused, he shrugged and shuffled the cards.

Halfway through placing cards down for a game of solitaire, he paused. That's odd, he said. It almost looks like there's a

Roy, who had sprung out of his chair at the word "odd", pounced on the cards. Rearranging the cards, he found that arranging them just so revealed words in the pattern on the back. Look at what you hold, they said. He turned the extra cards over to reveal that not one of them was a face card. He figured out what that meant quickly enough: you could have as many cards as you liked, but if none of them held any value they were worthless.

He went to General Grumman with his answer the next morning and left with a glowing letter of recommendation and assurance that an officer with his mind would be looking at promotions soon enough. Roy decided then and there to never reveal that he'd discovered the answer by accident. It could be to his advantage to let people think he was more clever than he was.

Then again, the opposite could be true too. He would have never called General Grumman particularly clever before that day, after all.


End file.
